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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   23860 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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You're definitely going against the current there. 23W generally aren't interested in 18M; in fact, 18W often aren't interested in 18M, they usually want older.

When I looked at the OKCupid data (so long long ago that OKCupid was an independent site, good for dating, and publishing good data!), there was a surprisingly sharp and linear relationship between ages and "allowable match" cutoff ages. For women the lower cutoff was roughly M >= W * 0.8 + 3.6. A typical 18W would just barely be interested in an 18M, and a typical 23W wouldn't be eager to go below 22M, certainly not 4 years below.

Like I said, life stages. At eighteen for a girl, a four year gap would be a fourteen year old boy, and that's way too young (how eighteen year old boys feel about fourteen year old girls I can't comment). Nineteen and twenty-three isn't quite so bad, but still a gap. You might have younger siblings that age, and the idea of "I'm dating the peer of my younger brother" just feels off.

If men apparently have no problems with "yes she is young enough to literally be my daughter, so?" then "young enough to be a sibling" would be no deterrent.

Sorry about whoever was downvoting you, and I wish they'd bug off.

how eighteen year old boys feel about fourteen year old girls I can't comment

I vaguely recall thinking "she'll probably be really cute in a few years, but it'd be gross to say so" about a fourteen year old girl when I was seventeen. I don't think I was an outlier. In the OKCupid data, there was a cutoff for both sexes at 18, but the male lower limit for the ages represented was a pretty linear W >= M * .5 + 6.5 (slightly more creepy than the "Seinfeld rule"!), and if we (dubiously) extrapolate that back to 18 that would give us 15.5 as a lower limit.

Nineteen and twenty-three isn't quite so bad, but still a gap.

No, but what throws a wrench in semi-logical explanations is that for both typical men and typical women it's a gap that is considered to be much more significant in just one direction. 23 year old men in the OKCupid data were generally interested in 18-27 year old women, and 19 year old women were interested in 19-25 year old men; 23 year old women were interested in 22-29 year old men, and 19 year old men were interested in 18-23 (probably 16-23, extrapolating) year old girls+women. Apparently "I'm dating the peer of my younger brother" gives The Ick, and "of my older sister" is Ick-adjacent, but "of my younger sister" and "of my older brother" are (or at least were; I'm sure Age Gap Discourse has had its ups and downs over the decades after this data was created) much more accepted.

You might have younger siblings that age, and the idea of "I'm dating the peer of my younger brother" just feels off.

This is just silliness.

You wouldn't feel weird dating "this girl is in my sister's class, my sister who is five years younger than me"?

Women would feel a bit odd about "I'm twenty-two, he's sixteen". Men, of course, are different as I'm being told on here. Big tits? Old enough!

Five years is five years, it doesn't matter if I have a younger sibling of that age. "Peers of my siblings" aren't somehow off limits. I'm pretty sure they aren't for women either, the issue is that young women prefer older men -- they'd have no problem dating their older sibling's peers.

Yeah, Nybbler, but what I'm trying to get at is why women prefer older men and men like 'em as young as they can get 'em. Now, you can go "women like older men because they're rich, but they'd fuck guys five years younger on the side if they had a sugar daddy financing them" but that's not the sole or main reason. Why are cougars considered more a figure of fun than the rich older man? Older women having gigolos or cicisbeos in later life as rich widows (or during the life of a complaisant husband) is a thing, but women in their mid or late twenties dating guys in their late teens is not.

Whereas we're getting arguments on here for "twenty five year old guy, seventeen year old girl, all natural and good".

If we are talking about intentionally making babies soonish, it makes perfect sense for 23W not to pick 18M, because unfortunately, most 18M's are not heirs to vast family estates, nor are most 23W's for that matter. In 2020 (e.g. before AI complicated things further), it made perfect sense for both men and women to postpone having kids until they are in their 30s, have finished their education and have high-paying, steady jobs. Of course, this does not give them a lot of window to find a partner and have kids -- especially if they want multiple kids.

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